Pascal Martin's latest post (in French, but the English version is coming soon) shares some statistics he's gathered around the usage of various software around the web, more specifically those involved in web-based applications.

I've collected statistics about the use of different PHP versions several times. The first time was in September 2011 and the most recent was in November 2013. At this point, PHP 5.2 still accounted for 34.4% of all PHP installations with PHP 5.3 moving up to 48.7%. This new data was collected the weekend of October 19th, 2014. At this point, the current stable versions of PHP are 5.4.34, 5.5.18 and 5.6.2. PHP 5.3 is no longer maintained (since August 14th 2014) and PHP 5.2 hasn't been supported for 4 years now.

He's broken up the statistics into a few different sections:

Web server software

Usage of major versions of PHP

Usage of minor versions of PHP

Versions in use under each of the major version numbers

He includes both the raw numbers (percentages) and some graphs showing the results in a bit more consumable fashion. It's interesting to see that, despite it being quite an old version now, PHP 5.3.x still has the largest share in the usage results.

There's also several things that will break compatibility with code written for previous versions including changes in JSON decoding, GMP resource handling and updates to the mcrypt functions. For more information on these changes and the list of things to know before using it, check out the migration guide. As always, you can get this latest version from the downloads page or windows.php.net for the Windows users.

Derick Rethans has shared some of his thoughts on how to not be evil when it comes to making changes in languages like PHP. He suggests that any backwards compatibility break should be treated with the weight it deserves and not just thrust upon users.

This is a repost of an email I sent to PHP internals as a reply to: "And since you're targetting[sic] the next major release, BC isn't an issue." This sort of blanket statements that "Backwards Compatibility is not an issue" with a new major version is extremely unwarranted. Extreme care should be taken when deciding to break Backwards Compatibility. It should not be "oh we have a major new version so we can break all the things"

He talks about the two kinds of backwards compatibility breaks: obvious things where features are removed or changed in a major way and subtle changes in how the underlying code for PHP works ("subtle changes"). He points out that most of the frustrations from users comes from the second type, making for a slower adoption rate and maybe not even adopting at all.

Can I please urge people to not take Backwards Compatibility issues so lightly. Please think really careful when you suggest to break Backwards Compatibility, it should only be considered if there is a real and important reason to do so.

As Manuel Lemos mentions in his most recent blog post the official name for the next major release of the PHP language has been decided...and no, it's not PHP 6. Based on the results of this vote, the next major version will start off the PHP 7 series.

Manuel talks about some of the reasoning behind skipping over the PHP 6 naming and how it's possible that the PHPNG branch could become the base for PHP 7. Some of the improvements in this release could include:

Huge Performance Improvements

JIT (Just In Time) Engine

AST: Abstract Syntax Tree

As it stands now, there's no predicted release date for PHP 7, but guesses put it between one to three years out, depending on the functionality it plans to include.

As is mentioned on the php[architect] site today, they've released their latest issue - the April 2014 edition, Major Players.

It's spring, and (here in the U.S.) the Majors are starting up! In sports, we all have our favorites- the ones we love, and the ones we love to hate. In PHP, we have the similar players- Drupal, WordPress, and Yii Framework (to name a few). Love them or hate them, you can't deny that they're Major Players!

Articles in this latest edition cover topics like:

Programmatically Control Drupal

Get Started with Joind.in

Advanced Authentication in Laravel

Fly with Phalcon

You can pick up your copy directly from the php[architect] website or you can always subscribe (with both digital and print options) for a full year.

NetTuts.com has posted their own "what you must know" about the recently released (major) upgrade to the PHP language - PHP 5.4.

PHP 5.4 is here; the next major step forward since version 5.3 - keeping PHP 6 (full Unicode support) on hold for now. The latest enhancements significantly improve its elegance, while removing deprecated functionality, resulting in a dramatic optimization of the runtime (up to 20% more speed and memory usage reduction).

The Bakery (a CakePHP site) has announced the release of CakePHP 2.0, a major shift in the framework with some very large changes to bring it up to the level of other full-stack frameworks currently offered for PHP.

The CakePHP core team is very exited to announce a major jump in the version numbering. CakePHP 2.0 stable is out! we have put endless hours into this release and great ideas have made it into the the framework for this version. [...] The overall CakePHP ecosystem has also been improved. [...] A huge thanks to all involved in terms of both contributions through commits, tickets, documentation edits, and otherwise contribute to the framework. Without you there would be no CakePHP.

Some huge changes have happened in this release including:

Dropping PHP4 support

Use of more native PHP functions

PSR-0 compliance

Object injection for libraries/components/helpers/etc

Console tools completely rebuilt

A move to PHPUnit tests (away from SimpleUnit)

HTML support in form helpers

Lazy-loading on just about everything making the overall experience faster

Several new plugins like: DebugKit, Datasources, MongoDb, Migrations and AclExtras

There's an interesting postJeff Atwood has made to his blog about PHP - its lack of standards, the way the language is structured and why none of that matters when it comes to its popularity.

PHP isn't so much a language as a random collection of arbitrary stuff, a virtual explosion at the keyword and function factory.

He includes links to several otherarticles that follow the "PHP sucks" train of thought too, but he notes that none of that really matters - its the popularity of PHP, its use in major corporate and social networking applications that is seeming to help drive it even more for developers to pick up and learn as a first web language.

Why fight it? I say learn to embrace it. Join with me, won't you, in celebrating the next fifty years of glorious PHP code driving the internet. Just don't forget to call the maintain_my_will_to_live() PHP function every so often!

He details what the two new components are all about and includes comments about the stability of the eZ Components libraries (due to the use of test-driven development) and mentions one component in particular - Mail.